How Links Work in 2007
November 17, 2007
Stumble it!How links work in 2007 and may be the same trend will work in 2008. No one knows what will be the future of links but we know the present and this is how it works.
Penalties, filters, phrase based reranking related to…
Irrelevant links (2007):
aka. links bought for PR, nonsense link exchanges, blog spam, non-editorial directories
Irrelevant links get devalued. PERIOD. ( not just new links, but *all* such links in retrospect )
- 1. a site with lots of irrelevant links ON it *will* get a penalty.
- 2. a site with lots of irrelevant links TO it *will* be demoted.
- 3. a new site which aims to compete in monitored areas with links from irrelevant sources will *never* make it. Regardless of volume.
- 4. and most importantly… regardless of the trust towards the source ( an irrlevant link from Harvard, is… just as irrelevant. uh, er, no, actually it’s worse, for it’ll flag you until you gather enough trust, relevance to counter that link… as if you could. .edu spammers: goodbye. )
Relevant links ( in and out ) will strengthen your theme in Google. You’ll rank higher.
- 1. Also, relevant links for some mysterious reason, tend to bring in more traffic too.
- 2. A lot of such links will make you less dependent on search engine traffic.
- 3. A site with lots of relevant links ON it is *OK*
- 4. A site with lots of relevant links TO it is *OK* ( extension: don’t request/exchange/buy sitewide links to your site. Make sure to have variety in your incoming anchor text, watch out for natural balance in your link profile )
These aren’t myths, gossip, blog posts from Joe SEO, these are/this is the new Google, the new patents, the prelude to Universal Search, TrustRank revisited, and the root of all -950 rankings. I’ve been doing research since May on the issue of what caused all the shakeup. In layman’s terms the trust that’s passed with links and which is required to rank for competitive phrases… is tied to relevance. You have to stay on topic.
- Link to me, I’ve posted great content and you’re the established website on topic, please help.
- Link to me and I’ll link to you, let’s share the visitors interested in this.
- I’ll link to you because you’ve posted great content. No need to thank me.
Meaning… lot more comprehensive, managable communication between those who built a new site, and those who are already at the top and want to stay there.
In short
Competitive keywords:
- Relevant links, ie. the *source* and the *target* being relevant to each other will make you rank.
- Irrelevant links ie. the *source* is NOT related to the *target* won’t go nowhere + kill your rankings for life.
Non-competitive keywords:
- Google doesn’t care, neither do I, nor does any SEO. And this isn’t a coincidence.
Solution:
Go out, look for sites that are related to yours. Related by theme, and not only words.
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Posted in Search Engine Optimization
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November 17th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
We are seeing all these changes as bad because we see it from a webmaster’s view. If we see from Google’s and search engine users view, this ‘relevance of site’ is actually a good thing.
With relevance so important in terms of links, I guess searches might become much more relevant and the results provided by Google will have more quality.
November 17th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Great post. I’m going to take this as advice
-Mike
November 19th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
This is definitely a good post, and definitely shows and clears up some misconceptions that i had about links in general.
November 20th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Does this mean that you can actually harm your competitor?